How to Avoid the 5 Worst Living Room Design Mistakes
Layouts that thwart conversation. Furniture that’s too chunky. Rugs that are too runty. Design pros share the living-room decor mistakes they see most often and how to steer clear.
4 min
THE RELATIVELY NARROW function of a bedroom or dining room largely dictates those spaces’ décor. A home’s communal chill chamber, however, has to be a lot of things to a lot of people: intimate and sophisticated enough for guests sipping aperitifs and cozy enough for family couch-potato Sundays. With so much asked of living rooms, the potential for decorating missteps can daunt even experts.
Nina Edwards Anker’s first principle: Start with ease—navigability, comfort, visual calm. “The worst error I see in living rooms is overcrowding,” said the founder of New York City’s Nea Studio. “Spaces, like paintings, need room to breathe.” Among her tips: Allow for ample storage to tuck away clutter. Meanwhile, Aileen Warren, of Jackson Warren Interiors in Houston, warns against filling the room with every stick of furniture on your wish list. “Be sure there’s enough space for traffic to move comfortably in and out of the seating groups,” she said.
Here, designers identify five other living-room gaffes they see far too often, and share their professional workarounds.
1. Conversation Pitfalls
“Don’t design a pretty space for a museum when living rooms are for socialising,” said Marissa Stokes, a Ramsey, N.J., designer. Novice decorators goof up here by leaving chasms between seats or, as Susan Jory points out, lining up all the furniture against the wall. “Seldom does one hold court,” said the London, Ontario, interior designer wryly.
Instead: Nurture intimacy with smart seating placement, says Kevie Murphy, of K.A. Murphy Interiors in Manhasset, N.Y. “Add [bonus-seating] ottomans under consoles, position chairs in the corners of the rooms.” A backless divan allows for “double-sided conversation,” she added. “And be sure each seated person has a table to place a drink or cocktail plate.”
2. Puny Rugs
Emily Del Bello, a New York City designer, looks askance at rooms where the carpet is too tiny to anchor more than a coffee table, while the rest of the room’s pieces float about visually untethered.
Instead: “The rug should go under all the furniture in that area, or at the very least, under the front legs of all sofas and chairs,” said Jen Samson, a Laguna Beach, Calif., designer. “This grounds the space and creates a frame [for] the area.”
For clients obsessed with vintage rugs too small for their living rooms, Katie Davis, an interior designer in Houston, layers the collectible pieces onto plenty-big neutral jutes. Some expansive advice: “Always go larger than you think,” directs Emily Williams of Z Properties, a design-build-interiors firm in Winter Park, Fla.
3. Monotony
Almost as unimaginative as a matching set of furniture is a scheme in which every piece conforms to one style, says Isabel Ladd. “When a living room is decorated completely traditional, or completely modern, the room feels stagnant,” said the Lexington, Ky., designer.
Instead: The décor should combine high and low aesthetics, says Paola Zamudio, founder and CEO at Npz Studio+ in New York City, who suggests, for example, “a designer statement piece combined with a vintage décor piece.” Disparate styles can blend within a single object as well. Linen upholstery and graphic embroidered trim can make a sofa with a traditional silhouette feel fresh, said Ms. Ladd.
4. Scale Fails
Dennese Guadeloupe Rojas, principal designer at Interiors by Design in Silver Spring, Md., warns that buying a one-and-done suite from a furniture showroom can saddle you with both a dull room and relentlessly overscale pieces. Benjamin Deaton has seen folks challenged by a small room err in the other direction, yielding to the false hope of “dollhouse furniture.” Said the Lexington, Ky., designer, “What you get is the opposite, a room that looks cluttered and still small.”
Instead: “Mixing the scale of furniture pieces can actually make the room feel larger and have more depth,” said Mr. Deaton. For those contemplating purchasing new furniture, Chicago design pro Bruce Fox recommends using blue tape to map out their footprint on your floor. To estimate their bulk in three dimensions, he suggests “piling other furniture or even empty boxes onto the footprint to mimic the height of the piece and get the full sense of scale.”
5. Dominating Overheads
One is less likely to curl up with a novel or chat for hours with friends under lights that are operating-theatre-bright.
Instead: “Lighting can change the entire landscape of the room,” said Mr. Deaton, who favours a combination of decorative lamps that double as sculpture, overhead lighting and shaded sconces that add texture and glow to a corner space.
Ms. Jory espouses dimmers: “Ambient lighting on tables and walls, paired with ceiling fixtures also on dimmers, provide a wash of warm, inviting light.”
Monster Chairs and More
Design pros recall egregious parlour schemes
“Recently, a client picked a single piece, an oversize armchair, then tried to design her entire living space around it. She realised, after hiring me, that she had to sell the armchair because it clashed with and crowded the sofa and storage cabinet we picked.” —Nina Edwards Anker, founder, Nea Studio, New York City
“The worst is when people purchase multiple pieces of furniture in the same, neutral upholstery fabric. Sure, the goal was to be cohesive, but the result is unfortunately a space that is sterile, slightly cold and without personality.” —Glenna Stone, interior designer, Philadelphia
“I usually see a massive sofa and a bunch of ditzy, underscale pieces because nothing else will fit properly.” —Liz Caan, interior designer, Boston
“I’ve seen large blowup pool toys laying about a primary living room and oversize shiny La-Z-Boys pushed into corners without anything else in the room.” —Melanie Hay, interior designer, Toronto
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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